Shillong, June 24: The Congress has alleged that the Conrad Sangma-led MDA government is paving way for private companies to run the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL).
“I am afraid MeECL may not be with the Meghalaya government because their intent is very bad and they are paving the way to be taken over by some private company ultimately,” Congress spokesperson Zenith Sangma said in a statement issued on Thursday.
“Their modus operandi is, as such that they are creating such a situation where MeECL will be in a dept trap – then with an excuse that MeECL cannot sustain on its own and therefore it may be run by any private company allegedly having the partnership with the kith and kin of the people in power,” he said.
Zenith pointed out that the chief minister and power minister don’t bother to improve the generation resulting in huge loss of more than Rs 600 crore revenue to the public exchequer.
Their focus is to take loan and to call tender and award contract at an exorbitant rate arbitrarily. They began taking loan after loan – starting from taking loan for power purchase, took loan to make payments to their favoured contractors be it for DDUGJY, be it for SAUBHAGYA and many other Schemes,” he said.
Zenith said the MeECL is taking a loan of 1345.72 crore with 9.50% rate of interest whereby Rs 10.65 crore has to be paid per month only as interest component and hence the total debt of the corporation is touching Rs 2000 crore.
He said mortgaging the land and other assets of the MeECL is with an intent to lease out to other outside companies like the way they are doing with M/s JPS Industries Limited on the pretext of manufacturing smart meters.
“Now after all these, the MeECL’s monthly expenditure including repayment of loan is around Rs 110 crore against its monthly income of Rs 80-85 crore. So, MeECL is running at a loss of Rs 25-30 crore per month,” he said.
Zenith asked the chief minister to desist from running the state as a corporate house.
He pointed out that there has been no representation in the Board Directors from the Power and Finance Departments for very long time.
He said there is mismanagement even in the recruitment at the entry level.
“ The department is disproportionately creating new posts for Addl Chief Engineers and Chief Engineers whereas the management is advocating minimising the burden by outsourcing the work to other companies”, Zenith said.
He pointed out that the corporation is generating only 60 MW out of 356 MW of installed capacity because of the mismanagement thereby losing the revenue of more than Rs 50 crore per month.
Zenith alleged that the recent cabinet decision to scrap the outsourcing of 56 substations to the outside company was just an eye wash.
“Promise to institute an independent Inquiry into MeECL without materialising it, is another eyewash. What they are doing is, just for the gallery,” he said.
